Deep Silver Enters inXile's Wasteland 2 To Assist With Distribution

Wasteland 2 was one of the first mega-successes of the Kickstarter boom, and a new announcement today puts the title one step closer to release. This morning, inXile announced that it has entered into a distribution agreement with Saints Row IV publisher Deep Silver.

The arrangement is similar to EA's now defunct Partner program. Deep Silver will only be handling retail distribution, Kickstarter reward fulfillment, and assistance with quality assurance testing for localized international releases. Creative control remains with inXile.

According to inXile, this allows the developer to focus on their core competencies (making the game) while offloading distribution and fulfillment to another entity that handles these elements as part of its core business.

Our TakeThis is a brilliant move by both inXile and Deep Silver. This type of arrangement allows the developer to focus on making the game without inefficient and costly distribution. Deep Silver will be able to leverage its extensive international profile and expertise on a contractual basis, which helps defray overhead costs of running the business.

Most importantly, this arrangement does not impact the creative product in any way. This isn't a traditional publishing agreement. It's a contractual arrangement for a specific scope of services.

I'm assuming that if all goes well with Deep Silver that they will also handle distribution for Torment: Tides of Numenera as well, although I can be wrong. Glad to know that Wasteland 2 is going along fine, as well as the other five projects that I backed.

I have a feeling that the return of Wasteland and its relationship with the Fallout series will be a different situation than, say, Thief and Dishonored or Tomb Raider and Uncharted. Fallout has changed so much from the isometric game inspired by Wasteland, so any glaring "similarities" will be interesting to spot.

Neat. I like this. I like it when games get Kickstarter funds, and attention, and then small- and medium-sized publishers pick up the rest of the slack and do what they're supposed to. Namely, backing a promising game, and handling the marketing/promotion and distribution stuff. This is how Kickstarter should probably work, unless you're funding genuine indie efforts from really tiny studios.

I really, REALLY don't want to see stupid Double Fine-type scenarios come out of crowdfunding ever again just because a developer was super irresponsible with their pitches and money. I mean, seriously, in retrospect, we should've never given money to Double Fine - those clowns didn't even have prototypes to show us when they pitched their games. Or solid ideas. Just funny videos and, like, dry erase board scribbles. Even though they could whip up some prototypes for a Humble Bundle in a few short weeks, they opted to waste time during their crowdfunding campaigns; with our money on the line. The whole Double Fine situation was a great lesson to learn, and a joke played on all of us.

It's much better this way, and like how Nicalis picked up 90's Racer for distribution, or how 505 Games is backing Takedown: Red Sabre. If was a smaller publisher, I'd be checking out every promising Kickstarter title out there. Games like Armikrog, A Hat in Time and Soul Saga would totally be on my radar if I was, say, in charge of a Majesco or even a publisher like Sega. This just gives me a whole lot more confidence in IneXile's RPG... and a lot more hope for Torment: Tides of Numenera. Hope Obsidian finds a taker for Eternity too, and Star Citizen. I hope the next wave of "high profile" crowdfunded games all help wash away the bitter taste of the Broken Age scenario.